differently, and then scrambles back to her sofa, and knocks her lame
ankle against something, and lies there groaning and enjoying herself
like a martyr. On days when she thinks she is never going to get
well, she says she doesn't know why she doesn't give me her things at
once and be done with it; and on days when she thinks she is going to
get well right away, she says she will have me one made something
like whatever dress I have got on, as soon as she's home. Then up
she'll jump again for the exact measure, and tell me the history of
every stitch, and how she'll have it altered just the least grain,
and differently trimmed to suit my complexion better; and ends by
having promised to get me something not in the least like it. You
have some idea already of what Fanny is; and all you have got to do
is to multiply it by about fifty thousand. Her sprained ankle simply
intensifies her whole character.

Besides helping to compose Fanny's expeditionary corps, and really
exerting himself in the cause of Uncle Jack, as he calls it, Dick is
behaving beautifully. Every morning, after breakfast, he goes over to
the hotel, and looks at the arrivals and reads the newspapers, and
though we never get anything out of him afterwards, we somehow feel
informed of all that is going on. He has taken to smoking a clay pipe
in honor of the Canadian fashion, and he wears a gay, barbaric scarf
of Indian muslin wound round his hat and flying out behind; because
the Quebeckers protect themselves in that way against sunstroke when
the thermometer gets up among the sixties. He has also bought a pair
of snow-shoes to be prepared for the other extreme of weather, in
case anything else should happen to Fanny, and detain us into the
winter. When he has rested from his walk to the hotel, we usually go
out together and explore, as we do also in the afternoon; and in the
evening we walk on Durham Terrace,--a promenade overlooking the